Preaching to the un-converted: Access to majority media for national and ethnic minority journalists

This chapter explores how Western multicultural experiences in media policy regarding the presence of minority journalists in media organisations compare to minority rights agendas in Eastern Europe. Western democracies possess a broad consensus that under-representation of ethnic minorities on editorial boards creates difficulties in providing balanced accounts about minorities and that positive discrimination initiatives redress such shortcomings. However, in most East European countries minorities set up separate media organisations that are central to the preservation of linguistic and cultural identities. Consequently, minority voices have exited the majority media which now lack minority journalists. The chapter concludes by calling for the (re)-inclusion of minority journalists in the majority media.

Gross, Peter (2008) Dances with wolves: A meditation on the media and political system in the European Union's Romania, Jakubowicz, Karol and Sükösd, Miklós (eds), Finding the right place on the map: Central and Eastern European media change in a global perspective, Bristol, Intellect pp 125-144

Kymlicka, Will (2001) Western political theory and ethnic relations in Eastern Europe, Kymlicka, Will and Opalski, Magdalena (eds) Can liberal pluralism be exported? Western political theory and ethnic relations in Eastern Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press pp 13-106

Kymlicka, Will and Patten, Alan (eds) (2003) Language rights and political theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press